


Drink Your Tea

by herequeerandreadytofight



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Caretaking, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I am ill and mopey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 18:50:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16023848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herequeerandreadytofight/pseuds/herequeerandreadytofight
Summary: aka 5 times Tommy was sick and 1 time he wasn't





	Drink Your Tea

When Tommy woke up with a fever and a cough he immediately started to cry. He’d spent enough time with his mother in the last few weeks of her life to know that the coughs racking his body meant only one thing. Polly smoothed back his hair.

“You aren’t going to die, Thomas. Now drink your tea.”

He didn’t die, and Ada left her dolly with him when she went to school, and Arthur swiped some medicine but it was the wrong kind, and Polly sang him to sleep.

* * *

He didn’t die, but a decade and a half later, he wished he would. Buried in the mud of France, ravaged by fever and lice, and lungs full of phlegm and dirt, he wished nothing more. In the haze of his fever, between visions of rats crawling across his skin and Greta’s emaciated face hovering inches above his own, he saw John clutching his hand and Arthur trying to force down broth. They clutched his hands the night before they let him go to the hospital, and in the other hands, they held the rosaries Polly had insisted on them taking.

“Sé do bheatha, a Mhuire, atá lán de ghrásta” Arthur began, and John followed, Tommy chiming in when he had the breath.

* * *

 

Sometime after the war, not long enough for the dirt to be fully scrubbed out from beneath his fingernails, Lizzie shook him awake.

“Tommy, you have a fever.” She gave him a look that managed to be commanding, even though she was naked as the day she was born. “You don’t have the clap, do you?”

He shook his head, and she wriggled into her dress, grabbing a cup as she did. When she returned with water, she held his head up as he sipped at it, then smoothed the covers over him as he slipped back into sleep.

* * *

Grace, surprisingly, was not so good with vomit. Every time she came into the room, she’d gag a little bit. She tried though, returning with water and tea and toast after he’d kept the tea down. Every time he tried to get up, she gently pushed him back down.

“You took care of me when I was sick every morning, let me take care of you.” And he did, sinking back into the bed roughly the size of his childhood bedroom, as she sung love songs.

 

* * *

 

“I heard you’ve been a holy terror.” He squinted up from the paper to see Ada at the foot of his bed, brandishing a cup of tea. “Polly called.”

It seemed like some kind of cosmic joke, getting sick when being out in the fields under the sky was the only thing that let him sleep through the night after Grace. Johnny and Mary had colluded and refused to let him out of the house. Some glasses may have been smashed in protest.  
“You didn’t have to come.”

“Of course I did. What kind of communist would I be if I let poor Mary deal with you by herself? Besides, I’m a-”

“You are absolutely not a nurse.”

She huffed, but there was a smile there. “Drink it and I’ll be back with soup.”

* * *

 

There hadn’t been anyone taking care of him in a long time. Arthur had fucked off with the chickens, John was dead, Polly could barely speak to him without looking like she was going to spit, and he couldn’t quite look Mary in the eye after the morphine hallucinations. Still, he remembered what to do when Charlie peeked into his study. He looked afraid in a way that shattered Tommy’s heart.

“Alright, Charlie?”

He shook his head. “Don’t feel good.” Tommy put a hand to his forehead. It was warm enough that he felt his chest seize up a little bit.

“It’s alright. Here, Dada will tuck you in.” He nearly rang for Mary before he remembered he’d given her the next few days off to visit her grandchildren, and the rest of the staff were meant to be on holiday, because he was meant to be on holiday before he’d canceled. That was fine. He’d orchestrated his family up from the muck of Birmingham, he could take care of a sick child. He rummaged around in the kitchen and put together tea and toast, and carried them up to Charlie’s bedroom. He stroked Charlie’s downy hair and told stories until his throat was dry. Then, as his breathing slowed, Tommy sang Charlie to sleep.


End file.
